Six Major Atonement Paradigms

Atonement Paradigms are often times brought about when it comes to answering the question of how sin gets dealt with in a variety of situations. The word itself can be defined as the process of being made one with the Lord. Restitution can be linked to this category, as bringing up the element of justice, doing something wrong and the idea of punishment that follows. In layman’s terms, it is doing something wrong, then working through a process of making it right once again. There are six major Atonement Paradigms: Penal Substitution, Ransom Theory, Christus Victor, Moral Exemplar, Ontological, and Homoousial; all answering the three major questions that come about.
The first inquiry is, what is the overall problem? Penal Substitution claims the problem is sin tainting the individual. The perfect united community God has created for his sons and daughters to live in has been punctured by sin, eliminating the perfection that once upheld the environment. The Ransom Theory indicates the problem to be the accumulation of guilt in society. It is like continually “adding the
Penal Substitution argues that we must believe that Jesus died in our place. The Ransom Theory says belief in the church allows for one to “hop on”; being a collective body where one tries to not commit sin. Christus Victor professes that our individual walk of faith/ discipleship is the solution. Sin is the consequence of living the Satan’s world; therefore, in order to get out of this world, one must focus on their walk of faith in order to break free from his ties. The Moral Exemplar Paradigm recounts that living like Jesus is the way to go. The Ontological Paradigm avows that living the God life with the goal of forming a union with the Lord is essential; this meaning that one should strive to please God. Homoousias requests that society live the kind of life that Jesus lived; “obedience, fellowship, stewardship, and